Experimental Game Design
DETAILS
Pre class prep:
* Bring in one sample of best work (this does not
have to necessarily be “art”, but the best work you have done to date.) Not for
critique, but to know each others’ talents
Week 1:
Aug 29
Discuss
* overview of course
* Studio visit by Igor
* What is a game?
Jesper Juul The Game, the Player, the
World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness
* Why do people play games?
* creative practice in cross disciplinary collaborations
* studio practice
* definitions.html
Look at
best works (not a critique)
* Rensselaer Folsom Library Game Research Resources
review
* Screening, Why We Fight
Readings:
*
Play as Design by Brenda Laurel
* Homo Ludens:
A study of the Play Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga
* Man,
Play, and Games by Roger Caillois
* Your personal research. Please
cite your references in your presentation.
Assignments:
• If you have not done so already, bring sample of best work to next class
• Personal Game Archaeology Project due next week (see assignments section for
details)
Week 2: Sept 5
Discuss:
* Screening and Readings
* Personal Game Archaeology Project presentations
* Game Blitz play Rez, two student games, Wii, other.
* Teams formulate and work in studio for the Design Blitz for designing a short workable game prototype you can do in two weeks. Due Sept 19
* Collaboration:
Issues in interdisciplinary endeavor
Beyond
Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation and Creativity
http://books.nap.edu/html/beyond_productivity/ch2.html
(near footnote 43)
Tips for successful collaboration:
some from my research
http://www.nwrel.org/cfc/frc/collabtips1.html
Scenario Planning
Scenario planning is a method for learning about the future by understanding
the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces
affecting our future. It is a group process which encourages knowledge
exchange and development of mutual deeper understanding of central issues
important to the future. The goal is to craft a number of diverging stories by
extrapolating uncertain and heavily influencing driving forces. The stories
together with the work getting there has the dual purpose of increasing the knowledge
of the business environment and widen both the receiver's and participant's
perception of possible future events.
The method is most widely used as a strategic management tool, but this
and similar methods have been used for enabling other types of group discussion
about a common future.
Scenarios are narratives of alternative environments in which today’s
decisions may be played out. They are not predictions. Nor are they strategies.
Instead they are more like hypotheses of different futures specifically
designed to highlight the risks and opportunities involved in specific
strategic issues.
http://www.well.com/~mb/scenario/#What_is_Scenario_Planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenario_planning
* Design Blitz overviews of 2 game projects and artist overviews of
creating art for 2 & 3d games Part 1
Readings:
* Ernest Adams Design Philosophy
* Adams and
Rollings, Creating the User Experience
* Basic Game Design Fundamentals by Chris Crawford
Assignments:
Work with your team on “Design
Blitz” Game Due Sept 19
Week 3:
Sept 12
Discuss:
* Readings
* Design Blitz overviews of 2 game projects and artist overviews of
creating art for 2 & 3d games Part 2
[Visionaries of the Future
the Future: In a linear conception of time, the future
is the portion of the timeline that is still to occur, i.e. the place in
space-time where lie all events that still have not occurred. In this sense the
future is opposed to the past (the set of moments and events that have already
occurred) and the present (the set of events that are occurring now).
The Future becomes the past
* The 1939 New York World's Fair:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/DISPLAY/39wf/front.htm
Artists as “visionaries”
Futurists The Futurists explored every medium
of art, including painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and even gastronomy.
The Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was the first
among them to produce a manifesto of their artistic philosophy
in his Manifesto of Futurism (1909), first released in Milan and published in the
French
paper Le Figaro
(February 20).
Marinetti summed up the major principles of the Futurists, including a
passionate loathing of ideas from the past, especially political and artistic
traditions. He and others also espoused a love of speed, technology
and violence.
The car, the plane, the industrial town were all legendary for the Futurists,
because they represented the technological triumph of man over nature.
Marinetti's impassioned polemic
immediately attracted the support of the young Milanese painters
—Boccioni, Carrà, and Russolo—who wanted to extend
Marinetti's ideas to the visual arts (Russolo was also a composer, and
introduced Futurist ideas into his compositions).
The italian painter and sculptor Umberto
Boccioni (1882-1916) wrote the Manifesto
of Futurist Painters in 1910 in which he vowed: “We will fight with all our
might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion
encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel against that spineless
worshipping of old canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac, against
everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider
the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life
to be unjust and even criminal.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist
The Situationist International:
In 1957 a few experimental European groups stemming
from the radical tradition of dadaism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadaism)
John Heartfield
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davepalmer/cutandpaste/heartfield.html
Hannah Hoch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_H%C3%B6ch
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davepalmer/cutandpaste/hoch_big2.html
and surrealism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism, but seeking
to avoid the cooption to which those movements succumbed, came together to form
the Situationist International.
The name came
from their aim of liberating everyday life through the creation of open-ended,
participatory “situations” (as opposed to fixed works of art) — an aim which
naturally ran up against the whole range of material and mental obstacles
produced by the present social order.
Over the next
decade the situationists developed an increasingly incisive critique of the
global “spectacle-commodity system” and of its bureaucratic leftist
pseudo-opposition, and their new methods of agitation helped trigger the May
1968 revolt in France. Since then — although the SI itself was dissolved in
1972 — situationist theories and tactics have continued to inspire currents in
dozens of countries all over the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International
]
*************
Comics as cultural barometers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics
COMICS: A TOOL OF SUBVERSION?
http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol2is6/comics.html
Roy Lichtenstein http://www.artchive.com/artchive/L/lichtenstein.html#images
Sprite
Comics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_comic
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,63691,00.html
Machinima http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=1232
* Studio: Team work
Readings
* Adams
and Rollings The Level Design Process
Other
readings:
* The Art and
Science of Level Design by Cliff Bleszinski
also other articles at: http://www.cliffyb.com/rants/
- How
to Build a Better Cutscene
- Color Theory for
Game Design
Assignments:
Work with your team on “Design
Blitz” Game
Week 4:
Sept 19
* Student
presentations of Design Blitz Playable Prototype
Discuss:
* readings
*
On storyboarding: http://www.mediaed.org.uk/posted_documents/Storyboarding.html
Storyboard examples: http://movies.warnerbros.com/ed/cmp/storyboards.html
http://movies.warnerbros.com/eraser/cmp/sketches.html
http://sleepers.warnerbros.com/cmp/storyboards.html
* on Level Design:
*
Adams
and Rollings The Level Design Process
* mise en scene in videogames
* Jason
Rubin's "Great Game Graphics... Who Cares?"
* The Art and
Science of Level Design by Cliff Bleszinski
also other articles at: http://www.cliffyb.com/rants/
* How
to Build a Better Cutscene
* Color Theory for
Game Design
* A
Multi-Dimensional Typology of Games
* Final Project Teams Formation
Readings:
* The Construction of Experience: Interface as Content David Rokeby
* Gender and Human Computer Interface
Assignments:
Consider prospective teammates
and potential final project ideas
Week 5: Sept 26
Discuss: readings
*
Informal Studio work and brainstorming of
Prototype 1 Concepts
Innovative creative ideas and artists who create
games:
INNOVATIVE IDEAS:
Blended reality games
Physically based games:
Issues:
Obesity, Coronary Heart Disease & Diabetes
Eyetoy
DDR
http://www.ddrgame.com/?gclid=CLLE7u7p4oCFR4cgQodbStGqA
ParaparaParadise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSeCfMpeMOQ
Guitar Hero
http://www.guitarherogame.com/gh1/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW_Zkc7WAS8
Sony patent towards real life MATRIX.doc
"The pulsed ultrasonic signal alters the neural timing in the
cortex," the patent states. "No invasive surgery is needed to assist
a person, such as a blind person, to view live and/or recorded images or hear
sounds."
Rez -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHuQvctStmw
Sega's quirky, abstract
art-influenced shooter, an endorphin machine, video game inspired by the
abstract artist Kandinsky aims to overload the senses with its psychedelic
visuals and pulsating dance beats.
Rez for the Playstation 2 seeks to create a sense of synaesthesia, literally a
crossing of the senses, so that you can "see" sounds or
"taste" colours.
"Rez is an experience, a fusion of light, vibration and sound completely
immersed in synaesthesia," said its creator, Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Japanese
game developers United Game Artists.
The game takes place in a virtual world inside a computer. You play a hacker of
sorts, flying through six levels of cyberspace in search of the artificial
intelligence at the heart of this world.
But there is a twist to the traditional shoot-em approach that makes Rez stand
out.
Virtual DJ Every time you destroy one of the insect-like enemies, a
sound is generated. This sound becomes a form in the scrolling, flashing 3D
computer world rushing past.
Katamari Damacy-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqpPyhE5x2M
When the King of All Cosmos accidentally destroys all the
stars in the sky, he orders you, his pint-sized princely son, to put the twinkle
back in the heavens above. The only way you can do that is by rolling
everything on Earth into clumps so that he can replace what's missing in space.
"Everything" includes cookies, lawn mowers, lamp posts, sumo
wrestlers, bulldozers, brontosauruses , cruise ships, and more. Katamari Damacy
also includes a two-player battle mod e where you and a friend can see who can
grow the biggest ball of stuff. For one to two players.
Features:
Simple play controlled with analog sticks only; no buttons to press
Dimensions change drastically as clumps grow; 2-player battle mode
Ball-rolling and object-collecting gameplay with quirky, infectious humor
throughout Insanely cosmic animations; wacky musical stylings; royally
contagious storyline
Social Impact Games
a
new generation: games that immerse people in the real world, full of real-time
political crises. games’ designers aren’t just selling a voyeuristic thrill.
Games, they argue, can be more than just mindless fun, they can be a medium for
change.
http://www.socialimpactgames.com/
Serious Games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game
http://www.gdconf.com/conference/seriousgamessummit.htm
http://www.seriousgames.com/
Games for Change
(G4C)
http://www.gamesforchange.org/
Food Force United
Nations game
http://www.food-force.com/
Peacemaker Game
http://www.peacemakergame.com/
http://www.peacemakergame.com/game.php
Darfur is Dying
http://www.darfurisdying.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_is_Dying
Climate Crisis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/index_1.shtml
Impact Games
http://www.impactgames.com/company.php
Persuasive Games
http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/
UTOPIA REVERSED -
An Assault on Neurospace
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=17458&page=1
ICED an Immigration game
http://vivirlatino.com/2007/08/06/dont-get-iced.php
Paolo Pedercini
YouTube - Molleindustria
Gonzalo Frasca http://www.powerfulrobot.com/web/index_content.html
_______________
Bot Fighters-
http://www.botfighters.com/
location based mobile games
Can
You See Me Now? by Blast Theory
Activating Play
http://www.arts.rpi.edu/%7Eruiz/ExperimentalGameDesignSp04plus/EGD_Prof_Ruiz/ACTIVATINGPLAY/newwebsite/index.html
http://www.arts.rpi.edu/%7Eruiz/ExperimentalGameDesignSp04plus/index.html
Natalie Bookchin
‘The Intruder’ [1999] an experimental adaptation
of a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, and represents a new hybrid form of
narrative that exists on the border of computer and video arcade games, cinema
and literature.
http://www.calarts.edu/~bookchin/intruder/
Eric Zimmerman GAmeLab
‘Sissyfight’ [2000]
an intense war between a bunch of girls who are all out to ruin each other's
popularity and self-esteem.
http://www.sissyfight.com
Michelle Teran & Amanda Ramos
The Playgirls [2000]
http://www.ubermatic.org/playgirls/
Thomson & Craighead
‘Trigger Happy’ [1998]
http://www.triggerhappy.org/
Jodi
‘sod’ [2000]
http://sod.jodi.org/
selectparks.net games by artists
http://selectparks.net/
GAME PATCHES
Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski
‘Bio-Tek Kitchen’ [1999] is a Marathon Infinity game patch. In Bio-Tek,
the player cleans up the kitchen laboratory of a home biotech enthusiast using
weapons such as dish cloths and egg flippers.
http://lx.sysx.org/biotek/index.html
Anne Marie Schleiner
‘Madame Polly’ [1998] a video game whose eponymous heroine engages in first person
shooter style combat. The premise of this experimental game is that the near
future is characterized by data "population overcrowding"; it is
flooded with human controlled avatars and software personalities of all ages,
sexes and gene lines. This problem is exacerbated by the emergence of a
prolific hybrid breed of software agents called data ghosts, which are
imprinted personalities of humans who continue to participate, to learn and
thrive well beyond the life span of their physically human bodies.
Playskins
http://www.playskins.com/about.html
Robert Nideffer
Tomb Raider patch [1999]
http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/~nideffer/crack/
Exhibits:
http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v5n2/index2.html
http://www.banffcentre.ab.ca/WPG/past/language.htm
http://www.re-load.org/
Behavior:
* From Sun
Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games by Ed Halter
Write a short reaction paper
Write a short reaction paper
* Baudrillard and
Hollywood: subverting the mechanism of control and The Matrix by Jim
Rovira
Write a short reaction paper
* The
Oxymoron of Virtual Violence, J. Baudrillard
Write a short reaction paper
Assignments:
Work with your team on
Phase
I Proposal & Formal Group Presentation
Week 6: Oct 3
Discuss
Behavior:
Social Issues:
Are we constructing our game characters or
are they constructing us?
Military Industrial Entertainment Complex:
* From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games
by Ed Halter
* Lenoir-Lowood_TheatersOfWar
* WarCraft
Problematics of Warcraft:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060224/qhong_01.shtml
Two contrasting ideas about Play:
Play creating culture
Homo Ludens written in 1938 by Dutch historian,
Johan Huizinga
Huizinga_ Nature Significance of Play.pdf
"play-instinct" as an instinct that
emerged very early in human prehistory - in fact, he sees it as one of
humanity's primary instincts, one which provides the fundament for other
elements of society, such as religious ritual, war, and poetry. He has an
esthetic approach to history, where art and spectacle play an important role.
He was held in detention by the Nazis where he died in 1945.
The Ambiguity of Play
Brian Sutton Smith_ Play and Ambiguity.pdf
by Brian Sutton Smith, a
Play shows us the dark underbelly of the world
Catharsis and inoculation against the dangers of
reality
Symbolic side of human culture
A child gets the chance to make mistakes
Adaptation, teaching skills
Introducing us into certain communities
Fate, power, communal identity, frivolity, the
imaginary, the self
Jenny Terry: Killer
Entertainments: Conditions and Consequences of Remote Intimacy. The project
theorizes remote intimacy by tracing the relationship between entertainment
technologies and militarism in the
The technology brings its military weight to
creators.
The Oxymoron of Virtual Violence:
* Baudrillard and
Hollywood: subverting the mechanism of control and The Matrix by Jim
Rovira
* The
Oxymoron of Virtual Violence, J. Baudrillard
Are violent games cathartic or desensitizing?
- See Video & Discuss, An interview with
Lt Col. Grossman
Stop Teaching our Children to Kill
Col. Dave
Grossman believes that returning veterans are less likely to engage in violent
acts than civilians, despite the psychological effects of war, because of the
discipline learned while in service. However, he also cautions that "with
the advent ofinteractive 'point-and-shoot' arcade and video games there is
significant concern that society is aping military conditioning, but without
the vital safeguard of discipline. There is strong evidence to indicate that
the indiscriminate civilian application of combat conditioning techniques as
entertainment may be a key factor in worldwide, skyrocketing violent crime rates,
including a sevenfold increase in per capita aggravated assaults in America
since 1956."
LoPiccolo,
Phil. Editor-in-Chief, Computer
Graphics World, Vol 23, Issue7, July 2000
From the
FTC youth violence report http://www.ftc.gov/os/2000/09/pitoftestst.htm
Trigger Happy : Videogames and the
Entertainment Revolution by Steven Poole
Videogames first came on the market thirty years ago as a marginal
technological curiosity. Now they are virtually everywhere. Videogame sales
have equaled movie sales. They are played by more adults than children, and
game design can even be studied in college. Yet videogames are still often
viewed as a minor form of entertainment, at best shallow, or at worst harmful.
Now, Steven Poole argues that videogames are a nascent art for on track to
supersede movies as the most popular and innovative form of entertainment in the new century.
- ABOUT WAR:
REALITY: GAMES & GUTS
- Issues & ethics: osma
games nytJanuary 10.htm
- most current: www.americasarmy.com
(absence of blood and gore)
- tried and true: www.counter-strike.net
(lots of blood)
- Tom Clancy based games: http://www.redstorm.com/
(minimal blood)
-Beyond Shoot your Friends http://www.cpandfriends.com/writing/digital-illusion.html
New Ways of seeing the “other”
Saving
the World, One Video Game at a Time .doc
________________________
* Students present Phase
I Proposal of Final Project Presentations: rough
storyboards, concept ideas
Gender:
* Complete
Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered PlaySpaces by Henry Jenkins
Assignment:
Work on Phase II Prototype
2
due
Oct 10
Rough
Prototype
Week 7:
Oct 10
Discussion:
* Phase II Prototype 2 of Final Projects
* Reality Check Studio
Gender:
* Show Laura Croft movie excerpt
* Genderplay:
Successes and Failures in Character Designs for Video games April 16, 2003
posting by Jane
*
Skins, Patches, and Plug-ins Becoming
Woman in the New Gaming Culture http://www.genders.org/g34/g34_polsky.html
* Does Lara Croft wear fake polygons? http://www.opensorcery.net/lara2.html
* Genderizing HCI by Justine
Cassell
* Henry
Jenkins, “Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered PlaySpaces
Addiction:
- The Addictiveness of Games, Steve
Meretsky
- Addictive Technologies http://www.cpandfriends.com/writing/addictiv.html
Engagement & Social Formation:
- social conditions in MMORPGs:
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1222
- From
See:
http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/
-----------
* Genres
Genre and the Video Game:
http://www.robinlionheart.com/gamedev/genres.xhtml
A
Taxonomy of Computer Games by Chris Crawford:
http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Chapter3.html
General Taxonomy of Game Genres:
“Flash” Games
First-Person Shooters (fps)
Action Games
Real-Time Strategy
Turn-Based Strategy
RPGs
Sports Games
Simulations
Adventure Games
Emerging:
Immersive Reality: majestic
PainStation
Soda Constructor http://www.sodaplay.com/
NGame:
http://www.addictinggames.com/ngame.html
PC
Mac
On-line
Dedicated systems
Hand held
emerging
- Everything
But the Words: A Dramatic Writing Primer for Gamers
by Hal Barwood
- Storytelling in
Action by Bob Bates
- Building
Character- An Analysis of Character Creation by Steve Meretzky
- Building Character By Toby Gard
Assignments:
Prep for Phase
III Game Prototype & Formal Group Presentation due Oct 17
Week 8: Oct 17
*
Phase III Game Prototype & Formal Group Presentation
* Discuss
-
- Building Character By Toby Gard
- Motion
- Characters who look
line real people:
http://www.3dtotal.com/home2/gallery/gallery.asp?cat=character
* Possible Visiting Artist: presentation of both personal and professional
work.
What is a Game Engine? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine
List of Game Engines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines
Unreal: http://www.cliffyb.com/rants/ut-ld-tips.shtml
Torque: http://www.garagegames.com/
Python: http://www.python.org/
XNA: runtime
environment http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/328/index.php?cid=GCG_MARK_022007
* Artists who have worked with game engines:
Kurt
Hentschlager
http://epidemic.cicv.fr/geogb/art/gs/kurt/karma.html
Freidrich Kirschner
http://www.aec.at/en/global/press_detail.asp?iPressID=81&iAreaID=3
Paul Marino
http://www.machinima.org/
Workspace Unlimited
http://www.workspace-unlimited.org/vwa_flash.html
Readings:
project research
Assignments:
work
with your team on Phase IV Game Content due Oct 4
Week 9: Oct 24
* Phase IV Game
Content reviews
__________________
Poetics+Emotioneering
In
February's Game Developer magazine, David Freeman, a noted film, television,
and game industry writer and producer explained the important role of emotion in
games. "First of all, many more people watch film and television than play
games. Most will never be lured into playing games until games begin to offer
the emotional range and depth of the entertainment that they're used to
enjoying. Also, a more involving game experience means better word of mouth and
more buzz. The press likes to write about these kinds of games, which results
in more sales. Those creating games with stories and characters without
investing in putting emotional depth into their games will find themselves
further and further behind, and their games will be eclipsed." David
Freeman's webpage http://www.freemangames.com/idea/6_3.php
POETICS & Aristotle (Greek philosopher 384-322 B.C.) http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/aris.htm one of the fathers
of Western Philosophy, wrote over 400 books on nearly everything from mollusks
to immortal souls. He believed there was something wonderful about the whole of
the natural world.
Aristotle invented deductive logic:
Premise: all frogs can swim
Premise: This is a frog
Conclusion: Therefore it can swim
Similar logical structures or syllogisms can be produced with: No frogs” and
“Some frogs”
He is known for induction: These frogs can swim, therefore all frogs can
swim.
His teleological (circular) approach relies on methodological, cautious
tendencies which rely only on what one knows from what ones’ 5 senses tell
them. (This is in opposition to Platonic
tendencies which strive to seek hidden and ultimate mystical truths through the
use of reason.)
Aristotle's Poetics http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.mb.txt
Now I know who thought up plot, character, and grammar and wrote one of the
first style guides. He wrote that tragedy inspires fear and pity. Are any
computer games
tragedy- is it not possible to make and sell them?
His 4 kinds of tragedy: Complex; Pathetic; Ethical and Simple would apply to
Computer Games?
and similarly 4 kinds of epic stories (longer than a circuit of the sun and too
big to be staged)
Epics: "The Iliad is at once simple and 'pathetic,' and the Odyssey
complex (for Recognition scenes run through it), and at the same time
'ethical.' Moreover, in diction and thought they are supreme." Part XXIV
He seems to say that tragedy is superior to epic but he hedges his bets (as a
Macedonian he had to be wary of Athenian prejudices?).
All of a sudden, Aristotle is everywhere. Following
a link from ludology.org (Thanks, Gonzalo), I found myself in the recently
opened "Armchair Arcade" (www.armchairarcade.com).
And lo and behold, what do I find there? Matt Barton's 'Treatise on
Videogames', in which he applies Aristotle's Poetics to (among others) Space
Invaders.
He writes: "Like tragedies in Aristotle's time, Space Invaders' story is
obvious and irrelevant. We also know how the story must end--eventually, the
player will be destroyed. The 'fun' of this videogame is not the story, but
rather the gameplay. In the case of Space Invaders and other tragic games, the
player's satisfaction arises not from the literary contemplation of a story,
but the measurement of his gameplay skill as represented by the score."
(http://www.armchairarcade.com/aamain/article.php?22.0)
So, Matt thinks Space Invaders is tragic, and - as
he later points out - even cathartic. But is it really? And why do we keep
playing it if it cleans our souls of eleos and phobos? [I am not going into the
details about the different possibilities of translating the according passage
in Aristotle, but for those of you into that sort of thing, there's a short
summary and bibliography on the subject at http://qsilver.queensu.ca/classics/clst312d.htm]
Narrative
The art of telling a good story…..
-Everything But the
Words: A Dramatic Writing Primer for Gamers by Hal Barwood
- Storytelling in
Action by Bob Bates
Assignments:
prep
for Phase V Refinement due Oct 31
Week 10: Oct 31
Phase V Refinement reviews
Inhabiting a virtual space: gamers maximize their play
experience by performing
belief, rather than actually believing, in the
permeability of the
game-reality boundary. http://www.avantgame.com/writings.htm)
Factors::
Flow and Action
Csikszentmihali, M., Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience.
Inherent in the escape from reality are factors that are akin to Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi’s concepts of flow experience where the following occur: 1) a
challenging activity that requires skills, 2) the merging of action and
awareness, 3) clear goals and feedback, 4) concentration on the task at hand,
5) the paradox of control, 6) the loss of self consciousness and 7) the
transformation of time.
see
also see "Communication and Community in Digital Entertainment
Services" prestudy research report by Aki Jarvinen, Satu Helio and Frans
Mayra, University of Tampere, Hypermedia Laboratory pg.20-26.
http://tampub.uta.fi/tup/951-44-5432-4.pdf
Game
Play Gestalt
http://www.tii.se/zerogame/pdfs/CGDClindley.pdf
• McGonigal—A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play
(download pdf, top paper listed at: http://www.avantgame.com/writings.htm)
_______
Assignment: prep for Phase VI Further Refinement &
Formal Group Presentation due Nov 7
Week 11: Nov 7
Phase
VI Further Refinement & Formal Group Presentation
* Possible user evaluation test plan talk & testing guide if project is developed enough.
* If applicable Craft your User Evaluation Test Plan
Game
Theory
http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/eco/game/game.html
History of
Game Theory
http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/class/histf.html
Project Work
:::::::::::::::::::::::
Intensive Studio ::::::::::::::::::::::::::
• personal
research bibliography
Assignments: work on Phase VII Project Work
due
Nov 14
REQUIRED Lecture tonight:
Cory Arcangel
WED NOV 7 - 7:30pm
West Hall Auditorium One of the world’s best known new media
practitioners, game-hacker Cory Arcangel’s work
explores computer programming, P2P, glockenspiel, Bruce Springsteen, Amiga home
computers, 80s video art, and the Discrete Cosine Transform function. http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/
short reaction paper due: Nov 14
Week 12: Nov 14
* Phase VII Project Work presentations Project
work and informal critiques on group game which further reflects project
progress and testing.
* Discuss
and hand in reaction papers to Cory Archangel
::::::::::::::::::::::: Intensive Studio
::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Discuss
* User evaluation test plan
Assignments:
Phase
VIII Final Project Reviews & Formal Group Presentation due Nov 28
also if applicable: User Evaluation Testing Summary and Recommendations
Week 13: Nov 21 OFF - THANKSGIVING BREAK
work
on Phase VIII Final Project Reviews & Formal Group Presentation due Nov 28
Week
14: Nov 28 (second to last class)
Phase VIII Final Project Reviews & Formal Group Presentation
Intensive studio
Assignments:
complete and refine all work on
final projects for
Final Completed Game Project:
* CD # 1: your game and your game design document in html
format with all relevant files in a folder labeled: yournamefinalproject.html
for example, if I were a student, my files would be accessed by:
ruizfinalproject.html
* Printed posters
* Printed Final Game Design
Document
Week 15: Dec 5 LAST DAY OF CLASS
Phase IX- Perfected Game Festival-Ready Games presentations
Also due:
*
well designed game design document
*
project blurb & image page
*
project posters
Please
ensure that all work is spell checked.
All
work must be printed and also submitted on labeled CDs or DVDs
All work due this
day. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Discuss the future of games, simulation and upcoming
developments.
* The Game Industry Hyman, The Studio Stance